Stock tires in the cold!

[topazsparrow]

I bought my car right at the start of summer and didn't understand why people said the car was tail happy. To get it to drift (even in the rain) I had to be traveling at uncomfortable speeds. I'm no stranger to letting my tail wag a bit in the rain from my older 240sx, but it was like my FRS was on rails - and I loved it!

Now that the weather has cooled off a bit and the mornings are a couple degrees above freezing I'm noticing how slippery this car really is on the stock tires. I'm not sure if it's a matter of the tires breaking in a bit or the rubber being less sticky in the colder weather but I sure do notice how easy it is to let the back end slip out now.

You'd have to be insane to try to drive the stock prius tires year round!

Anyone else have similar experiences with the colder weather?

[Kelbyat07]

I was driving last night in the cold wet road and forgot how easy the twins are with being tail happy. I drove the car in the snow last year and it was fun as long as you go under the soeed limit haha.

[horrorbiz]

Well they are summer tires, which means they start to get pretty hard at around 40 degrees.

[bkblitzed]

the coldest it gets around here is like 40-50*F. So all summertires act the same under cold tires, which is fun 100% time.

[humfrz]

It hasn't gotten real cold here in Washington, but I have tried to drive a small, light car (Miata) on summer performance tires, when the temperatures drop to near freezing.

Now, I'm old and not real wild about having the tail of my car "kicking out", so, today I had some Goodyear, Eagle, Sport A/S tires put on my FR-S. Now, I feel all better ....

humfrz

[rusty959]

...I drove all last winter on the stock tires. Def not doing that again. I got stuck in incredibly light snowfall on what seemed no different than flat ground. Exciting times.

[klittl06]

The FRS (and I assume BRZ) came with either all seasons or summers as per tire rack. I usually would prefer summer and then buy winters, but I think this time I'll buy summers/autox and keep the stock wheels for winters (once the thread wears out).

[Suberman]

Originally Posted by topazsparrow

I bought my car right at the start of summer and didn't understand why people said the car was tail happy. To get it to drift (even in the rain) I had to be traveling at uncomfortable speeds. I'm no stranger to letting my tail wag a bit in the rain from my older 240sx, but it was like my FRS was on rails - and I loved it!

Now that the weather has cooled off a bit and the mornings are a couple degrees above freezing I'm noticing how slippery this car really is on the stock tires. I'm not sure if it's a matter of the tires breaking in a bit or the rubber being less sticky in the colder weather but I sure do notice how easy it is to let the back end slip out now.

You'd have to be insane to try to drive the stock prius tires year round!

Anyone else have similar experiences with the colder weather?

Cold or wet. The Primacy HP is not a suitable tire for this car. Period.

I have fitted 225/45x17 Pirelli Sottozero winter tires and the car is already much more fun to drive.

A set of same size proper summer or high performance all seasons is going on in Springtime. Michelin A/S 3 looks very promising.

[wparsons]

Anyone in Canada should be looking at 205's for snow tires, going too wide will make it float on snow and not give you as much traction when you need it.

I have 205/50's on my stock wheels and they worked well.

[Suberman]

Originally Posted by wparsons

Anyone in Canada should be looking at 205's for snow tires, going too wide will make it float on snow and not give you as much traction when you need it.

I have 205/50's on my stock wheels and they worked well.

Not in the real world. I stopped fitting "minus" size winter tires years ago.

I can assure you that the tire floatation effect is mythical. All modern tires are "too wide" for cutting through mud or snow. What you need now is a good stable tire for bare roads that also grips snow and ice. 205 or 225 is only 20 mm different. That's 3/4 of an inch which will have no effect on supposed tire floatation. Check out the snow and ice tires used on a WRC car and you'll see how narrow you have to go to get any useful traction effects.

My impression, not objectively tested, is that wider tires also work better on ice than narrower tires.

Snow tires grip by fixing snow into the tread which freezes to the snow on the road. Tire width is not relevant to this process. The grip is constantly refreshed by the snow tire tread flexing and self cleaning.

[Dipstik-sportech]

I use to race in a rubber to ice car with blizzaks on it. I can tell you right now that there is a HUGE difference in how tire width affects how the car drove. I ran a 155/80r13 and a 175/70r13 even with the tiny difference between those sizes I noticed a big difference in traction. In the cold you couldn't touch a guy running the 155's if you were on the wider 175's. Even back to back testing on the same car shows in the cold the 155 was faster.

Oh yeah and my buddy runs in the studded class with an awd celica gts and he runs Dmack studded wrc rally spec tires. Size 205/65r15 that's not crazy skinny by any means.

[dsgerbc]

On dry winter tarmac, OEM Michelins will grip better than some A/S tires and your Ice&Snow winter tires. On the other hand, they suck in the wet no matter what's the temperature. The will suck in the snow, and will be dreadful on the ice.

That said, when it's gonna be dry and cold, I'll be driving my BRZ to work on OEM rubber. Last winter BRZ was my only car and used Xi3s in the winter.

[wparsons]

Originally Posted by Suberman

Not in the real world. I stopped fitting "minus" size winter tires years ago.

I can assure you that the tire floatation effect is mythical. All modern tires are "too wide" for cutting through mud or snow. What you need now is a good stable tire for bare roads that also grips snow and ice. 205 or 225 is only 20 mm different. That's 3/4 of an inch which will have no effect on supposed tire floatation. Check out the snow and ice tires used on a WRC car and you'll see how narrow you have to go to get any useful traction effects.

My impression, not objectively tested, is that wider tires also work better on ice than narrower tires.

Snow tires grip by fixing snow into the tread which freezes to the snow on the road. Tire width is not relevant to this process. The grip is constantly refreshed by the snow tire tread flexing and self cleaning.

Not true, there's lots of actual data to support running a narrower tire for snows.

Originally Posted by Dipstik-sportech

I use to race in a rubber to ice car with blizzaks on it. I can tell you right now that there is a HUGE difference in how tire width affects how the car drove. I ran a 155/80r13 and a 175/70r13 even with the tiny difference between those sizes I noticed a big difference in traction. In the cold you couldn't touch a guy running the 155's if you were on the wider 175's. Even back to back testing on the same car shows in the cold the 155 was faster.

Oh yeah and my buddy runs in the studded class with an awd celica gts and he runs Dmack studded wrc rally spec tires. Size 205/65r15 that's not crazy skinny by any means.

Data like this!

Originally Posted by dsgerbc

On dry winter tarmac, OEM Michelins will grip better than some A/S tires and your Ice&Snow winter tires. On the other hand, they suck in the wet no matter what's the temperature. The will suck in the snow, and will be dreadful on the ice.

That said, when it's gonna be dry and cold, I'll be driving my BRZ to work on OEM rubber. Last winter BRZ was my only car and used Xi3s in the winter.

That's simply not true, sorry. Pure summer tires are designed for warmer temperatures and turn rock solid in cold weather. There's A LOT more to snow tires than just tread pattern, the rubber compound is also a huge part. My summer tires are WAY less grippy when the temperatures get down towards 0, I can only imagine how terrible they would be at -5. That's why people will swap to snows long before the snow flies... as soon as temperatures are consistently below +10 all day I'll have my snows on and don't put the summers back on until it's consistently above +10 during the day.

[dsgerbc]

Originally Posted by wparsons

That's simply not true, sorry. Pure summer tires are designed for warmer temperatures and turn rock solid in cold weather. There's A LOT more to snow tires than just tread pattern, the rubber compound is also a huge part. My summer tires are WAY less grippy when the temperatures get down towards 0, I can only imagine how terrible they would be at -5. That's why people will swap to snows long before the snow flies... as soon as temperatures are consistently below +10 all day I'll have my snows on and don't put the summers back on until it's consistently above +10 during the day.

Tires like starspecs/RE11/RS3s etc might be getting hard enough to be unsafe at -5C compared to all seasons. Tires like OEM Michelins aren't.
Switching to Ice and Snow (like Xi3/Hakka R/WS60) winter tires at +10C is stupid and compromises dry braking distance by A LOT.

I put my winter tires on when there's precipitation in the forecast + below freezing temps. Otherwise you're compromising your braking/cornering for nothing.

There is less grip in the winter in any tire, so statement "My summer tires are WAY less grippy when the temperatures get down towards 0" means squat in terms of how the alternate tires behave. Summer tires have tread design geared toward dry asphalt and that trumps temperature-specific compound until temps get reaaaaaly low.

Here's a link for you to chew on. Michelin pilot sport A/S in this link is basically a summer tire, with a bare minimum of ice/snow performance to qualify as an A/S tire, so you can treat is as a summer tire. At -5C it's better in the dry/wet than performace winter rubber and DESTROYS Ice&snow category winter tires.

There's zero reason to run winter tires at temps above freezing. It makes sense to run those below freezing in dry conditions, if your local government doesn't do a good job of treating the roads against ice. Then you can protect yourself against some random patches of ice from condensation. If your local government does a good job of road treatment, it's fairly safe not to switch over until the first snow.